Battlestar Galactica

TV and Movie page

Battlestar Galactica came from one of the Hollywood studios who told George Lucas that science-fiction was dead. When Star Wars started breaking box office records, they dusted off their scripts and story ideas, hired Star Wars special effects wizard John Dykstra (he won an Oscar for his work in SW, so tv audiences were wowed by the battle scenes in BG), and created Battlestar Galactica. While it may bear a superficial similarity to Star Wars or Star Trek, all 3 have major differences. Battlestar Galactica, the ship, is essencially an aircraft carrier in space. In Star Wars, the good guys have no "mother ship" for their fighters, and Star Trek doesn't even have one-man fighters as seen virtually every week on BG. Nevertheless, lawyers for Lucas threatened to sue and the series was almost killed before launch.
Each episode would start with impressive narration by Patrick Macnee (sometimes incorrectly spelled MacNee, he prefers the other spelling) of Avengers fame and host of Ghost Stories. He later guested as a mystery man who seemed able to work miracles. The entire series is essencially a quest for an unknown homeworld called Earth. BG leads 220 spaceships of various sizes & functions containing the last survivors of the 12 Colonies, destroyed by sneak attack from the Cylon Empire during treaty negotiations. To make the series easier to sell to US and British television, which both had strict limits on death portrayed on the screen, the Cylons were a robot race; this way you could blow away as many of them each episode as you wanted, robots aren't alive so they don't die...

After an impressive beginning with good ratings, the series seemed to run out of steam. After its 1st year, 1978-79, most of the human cast was fired and the series name changed to Galactica 80 (hoping to last thru 1980, I guess), but the series was cancelled after only a handful of new episodes. The highlight was an episode (possibly the 1st of Galactica 80) in which Los Angeles is destroyed in the opening minutes by Cylon ships. The camera pulls back to show that this is a simulation of what would happen if they reach Earth, which they're now close to, because it's too primitive to fight off Cylons.

The series starred Lorne Greene (known in his native Canada as the Voice of Doom during WW2) as the ship's commander and admiral of the fleet. Dirk Benedict and Richard Hatch played his fighter-pilot sons, and Anne Lockhart of Troll (the 1986 Harry Potter movie) joined the cast with the Living Legends episode, also as a fighter-pilot. The writer/director list included Donald P. Bellisario of "JAG" and Quantum Leap, Glen A. Larson of Buck Rogers, and Leslie Stevens, the creator of Outer Limits.Battlestar Galactica books & videos are available, as well as eps available on video or DVD

Video releases so far (Most are no longer available) from Amazon.comBattlestar Galactica (1978), is available only on DVD from Amazon.com
Baltar's Escape
Conquest of the Earth (they reach Earth)
Fire in Space
The Living Legends (aka: Mission Galactica), 2 hours
The Long Patrol
Lost Planet Of The Gods
The Lost Warrior
The Magnificent Warriors
The Man With Nine Lives
Murder on the Rising Star
The Young Lords

SYFY channel broadcasts of Battlestar Galactica

Times shown are EST/Pacific, all are new eps except 1970s marathons

Combined listings, note: 5am is night of date shown, it's not morning until the sun comes up and the vampires go home

No Lorne Greene 1970s eps currently scheduled, though Bonanza is showing on TV-Land, and no episodes of the new Battlestar Galactica are scheduled for Sept-October 2008
1970s Battlestar Galactics episodes can now be seen free at the SCIFI Channel Drivein

Fun fact:Edward James Olmos played the police chief in "Miami Vice" but thought the scripts were shallow and the TV-series silly, so he never looked directly at his costars (Thomas and Don Johnson) when talking to them. But fans loved it, they thought it gave his character a dark edge.The Miami Vice tv-series is now available on DVD but will probably never be seen in reruns due to its extensive use of copyrighted rock songs as the background music in each episode